Drawing from critical time and postcolonial studies, this book argues that 'waiting' is an essential concept in theorising the relationship between time and power in postcolonial fiction across the long twentieth century one that illuminates the contradictory temporalities that underlie narratives of colonial progress, modernisation and development. This study contributes to the resurgence of interest in time within literary studies by contending that waiting is integral to postcolonial temporalities, from anticolonial nationalist movements to forms of reconciliation after conflict. In addition to innovative readings of both classic and contemporary postcolonial novels, ranging from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness to Ishmael Beah's Radiance of Tomorrow, Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time challenges characterisations of the twentieth century as a time of acceleration by arguing for the centrality of waiting to time-consciousness in the postcolonial world.